Talk:Textual Analysis: V For Vendetta/@comment-105.226.142.96-20160220114752
Thank you for this piece. I watched V for Vendetta last night after a patient at the forensic psychiatric hospital I work at told me that his alter ego is 'V'. Curiosity aside, I wanted to learn more about 'V' in order to inform my work with this patient. I loved the film and was immediately drawn in. I knew nothing of V for Vendetta before watching the film. Then I disovered that it was based upon a graphic novel and started doing some reading online, which is what led me to this site. As much as I enjoyed the film, I am now intensely interested in reading the graphic novel. I seem to be drawn to characters whose lives embody anarchist ideals. The Joker, for example, is another character by whom I am completely enraputured. However, I think my interest (bordering on obsession) with the Joker is how he came to be the man he is, rather than who he is and what he stands for, especially given my work in the mental health field. The same is true for V as I came to know him in the film. I was interested in how he came to be the masked vigilante that he is. Now that I have read this article, I see that the film's focus on the history of the character and on the man himself rather than what he embodies, is not true to the graphic novel. Die-hard fans of the graphic novel may despise me for saying this, but I don't have major qualms with the film's deviation in focus. It would have been a very different film had it not made V subject to the same struggles as the rest of humanity - loneliness, longing to love and be loved, a desire to reconcile with one's past. All of these things make the film a visceral, human experience. Had the film been true to the graphic novels and retained V as an anonymous figure, not made in the likeness of man, the film would have been a more intellectual, even ascetic exercise. In sum, the film was great from a Hollywood perspective. It pushed all the right buttons. Some would even argue that it could even have done more of this. (While browsing the net, I saw a comment by a man who said that there "weren't enough romance scenes." I suspect this translates into, "Why wasn't there more 'action'?) I suspect that the film is not a case of an adpatation that set out to but failed to fuflill the objectives of the original text. Instead, I think the agenda for the film may have been quite different from that of the graphic novel. It is understandable that this deviation, even dissonance left Alan Moore so disilusioned. Now that I have had the film experience and satiated my desire to connect with the character on a human level, I am ready to engage with the less human V of the original text. The plot is rich with complex, topical themes that hold up a mirror to much of contemporary society. It should make for some interesting, important reading.